What rhymes with Bangkok?

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I would like to add a disclaimer: Nick came up with the title of this blog (and he's pretty damn proud of himself for it).

Saturday 2-12 to Tuesday 2-15
We headed to Bangkok on another overnight bus, but this one was actually comfortable & luxurious (relatively speaking). There was plenty of room, free blankets, free snacks and even a stop at a local restaurant for dinner. A much better experience than previous overnight buses or trains we’ve taken so far. Of course, once we got to Bangkok at 4am we weren’t able to check into our hotel yet, so we spent an exhausting (and HOT) day wandering around the city. Fortunately for us, Nick found a hotel in Bangkok’s foreign embassy neighborhood, so we were in a very nice and easily accessible part of town.

Bangkok is the first major, cosmopolitan city we’ve been in since Sydney and it was definitely a breath of fresh air! Great subway and elevated train system (so it was easy to get around), ridiculous amounts of car/motorcycle traffic, rising skyscrapers, lots of new construction, HUGE malls filled with copious amounts of endless, refreshing A/C! But even with all that, it still held an old Siam charm with glittering palaces, river taxis, a million street side food stalls and glittering buddhas everywhere. And it was not without its own political protests. On two separate occasions, we passed a police blockade overseeing a Yellow Flag Party demonstration near the Government House and, on the opposite side of the city, we caught some Red Shirt Party demonstrators gathering at a local park.

Our first sightseeing tour consisted of a fun ride along the Chao Phraya River via water taxi to Dusit Palace – a former residence and elephant stable of kings gone by. Sadly, no one is allowed to take pictures inside royal buildings, so I have no photographic evidence to share with you, but the palace art was unbelievably over the top! One of the more interesting points of our visit was that neither one of us was allowed to wear pants inside. We both had to buy a sari to be able to enter the palace. As you can imagine, Nick and I looked very dashing in our matching floor-length skirts. The palace building itself was a mixture of Buddhist themes and European flare: a gold leaf dome with Corinthian columns; frescoes of Siamese kings conquering indigenous tribes atop elephants, hanging above marble sculptures of naked cherubs carrying olive branches and grape vines. It was very mix-matched and seemed not at all inline with the Buddhist philosophy of relinquishing all earthly and material goods. But then again, the opulence of most Roman Catholic cathedrals doesn’t seem to follow Christ’s message of humility and poverty either.

The royal paraphernalia on display was insane too. There were solid gold replicas of elephant saddles, ceremonial thrones and mini-ships covered in a zillion diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds that were modeled after their life-sized counterparts for every occasion to celebrate the life of the king and queen. It was over the top to the extreme! The craftsmanship was beautiful, as you can imagine royal commissions would be but the craziest part was how many beetles must have lost their lives for it! I didn’t catch the species, but apparently there’s a large beetle in Thailand that is highly prized for its iridescent exoskeleton. The scales from this beetle are harvested in the gazillions to adorn almost every nook and cranny of the walls, chandeliers, model ships, throne back cushions, walls, you name it. It created a very stunning, beautiful effect, but I just can’t imagine having to be the person(s) whose job it is to skin a million beetles for a square foot of decoration!

Our next royal adventure was at the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (royal temple). We brought our requisite saris to enter the temple, but to our surprise, there’s a little bit of inconsistency among Bangkok’s royal locations. They laughed at Nick when he tried to put his on, saying saris are for girls. We tried to explain that we were forced to buy them at the other palace. They shrugged in apathy and turned Nick away until he borrowed some pants to wear. Odd. Anyway, once inside the palace, we got a glimpse of Thailand’s military prowess. There are huge ceremonial guards at each of the entrances: giant monkey-faced statues, colorfully painted and towering about 15 meters over you. Rooms filled with antique weapons and immovable palace guards stationed at gates, reminiscent of the Buckingham Palace guards, who weren’t allowed to move no matter how obnoxious the tourists were trying to take a picture with them. We got a glimpse of the Emerald (really jade) Buddha and peaked inside the king’s personal temple (filled with countless gold buddhas).

The most impressive buddha in Bangkok, however, was at Wat Po: the world’s largest reclining buddha. It was HUGE! I think its ear alone was as large as Nick! [Nick Note: My sis who is visiting London with my nephew told me that he, Tomas age 4, has started to see big things like missiles and saying “That’s even bigger than Tio Nick!” so I guess I am a common size reference for enormity.] It was quite impressive and the feet were intricately carved with the 108 teachings of Buddha etched in mother of pearl.

Before we got too “wat-ed” out, we visited one last temple: Wat Sakhet. We climbed up the Golden Mount to get a great 360 view of Bangkok and then headed out of the old city on another fun water taxi up the Klong Saen Saep River.

One of the more interesting places we visited was a former prime minister’s house along the back streets of Bangkok. M.R. Kukrit was a prime minister and former actor in Thailand. A very wealthy man, he amassed a large Asian art collection and built a stunningly beautiful home to house them in, surrounded by a very scenic garden. It was little green oasis tucked away in the midst of Bangkok’s busy streets.

Aside from the main tourist track, we tried to take in some “every day Bangkok,” which for us consisted of finding malls to hangout in and soak up some much needed air conditioning in the sweaty heat; grabbing a thai iced tea before catching a movie (my god, Blue Valentine was depressing); and checking out the oldest red light district in the city, which wasn’t nearly as interesting as I thought it’d be. Aside from dodging countless offers to check out a ping pong show (look it up or use your imagination) [Nick Note: No, look it up. My friend Steve told me to “check out the ping pong shows while in Bangkok” (in jest I know now) so my imagination immediately had visions of super-Asians doing amazing things in the table tennis realm with maybe super fast play and trick shots. I was super-excited. (Did I say super enough?) To my disappointment it was nothing like that. Luckily I decided to look it up in the internet first before I asked the hotel staff for a recommendation to a good ping pong show.], navigating your way around jam packed run-of-the-mill souvenir stalls, and catching a glimpse of very bored looking, bikini clad women dancing on table tops inside the bars, there really wasn’t much to see. Although I did find it funny when a man walked up to proposition Nick and when he was refused, rudely whispered that Nick should come back without me next time. :o)

We were fortunate enough to take a stroll through Lumpini Park and happen upon a free concert by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. I was surprised at the number of ex-pats that live in Bangkok! The concert wasn’t advertised to tourists, as far as we could tell, but there were large numbers of white families picnicking in the park and half the BSO program was spoken in English – which of course, was nice for us ;o)

The highlight of Bangkok, for me, was a day of getting lost in Chinatown. Bangkok was heavily influenced by Chinese laborers that helped build the new capital in the late 18th century and supposedly not much has changed (aside from all the neon signs) since then. It was a fun place to get lost in! Tiny, impossibly cramped alleyways were major commercial thoroughfares. Shark fins and skinned animals of all kinds adorned the restaurant windows, next to glittering gold and gem shops, around the corner from warehouses packed with shrink-wrapped buddhas. It was great! And the succulent, mouthwatering, roasted duck I had at the end of the day (along with a traditional Thai dance show) reminded me how much I missed Chinese food on this trip!

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Photos

Tiniest Dog
Its water bowl is a bottle cap!